Refished

Vienna · Austria

Sissi Vogler

“I had no training in bag design back then, but I had a vision: to make something truly valuable out of 'waste'.”

REFISHED turns used sacks and worn-out exhibition flags into bags, sewn where the material starts out: the sacks in Phnom Penh, the flags in Vienna. Sissi Vogler grew up in Salzburg and had built a career in advertising, living in Naples, Milan, London, Sydney and New York on sixty and seventy hour weeks, before she left close to burnout. Travelling through Cambodia in late 2011, she had the first samples sewn from used cement sacks, then founded the label in Vienna in 2012, running it for five years alongside a full-time marketing job before it became her only work. Her mother, Isolde Vogler, designs the bags with her.

I have three questions for you, and something in return.

Three questions.

Selected pieces

Basket Storage Baskets

€49.90ledge price

Refished

VIDE POCHE | Nachhaltiger Taschenleerer

€22ledge price

REFISHED Bags · Vienna, Austria

Every bag is signed by its maker

REFISHED makes bags from used sacks and old exhibition flags, and each piece is sewn where its material came from: the sacks in Phnom Penh, the flags in Vienna, where Sissi Vogler started the label in 2012.

The sacks come in packs of ten from markets in Cambodia and are cleaned before anything is cut. Each one was printed for the job it once did, rice, cement or fish feed, so no two are printed alike and no two bags come out the same. The product pages say it plainly: the print on a piece can vary.

I had no training in bag design back then, but I had a vision: to make something valuable out of 'waste'.
Sissi Vogler

A social workshop in Phnom Penh sews the founding collections, #CEMENT and #FISH, by hand. Every finished piece carries the name and signature of the person who sewed it, along with the place and the material. The product pages name them: Put Sophea, Mom Sreyneth, Ol Heang, Khuon Sithat, Meas Than, Sok Nak.

The flags stay in Vienna

#FLAGS follows the same principle as everything else here: production sits where the base material does. The collection is cut from used exhibition flags of the Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien and the Belvedere, so the sewing happens in Vienna, in one of the city's Stadtbahn arches. The exhibitions are still legible in the product names, Flying High, Pierre Bonnard.

Design stays in Vienna too. Vogler works with her mother Isolde Vogler, from Salzburg and trained in textiles; the ISOLDE BAG, shaped after the Kelly bag, is Isolde's design and carries her name. Companies bring material of their own as well: a Schärdinger poster from Wien Westbahnhof became giveaway bags.

A second life, signed by hand

From the start, Vogler could have had the bags made faster and cheaper. She chose not to. "I deliberately decided against factories and looked for a social workshop instead," she has said, and that choice still decides everything: where a bag is sewn, whose hands sew it, whose name ends up on the label. A sack that once held cement or fish feed is cleaned, cut and given a second working life, this time as something a person carries every day. The SOULMATE, both beach bag and everyday shopper and long the bestseller, still shows the print of the sack it was made from.